


Not A Game

by Kendrickhier



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Happy Ending, Kara Danvers appearance, Ouija, death mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-08 14:27:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16431167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kendrickhier/pseuds/Kendrickhier
Summary: General Danvers Week: Afterlifeor how impossibilities become possibilitiesKara brings a Ouija board when she comes over to Alex's, complete with candles to set the mood for this Halloween. Unfortunately however, she has an emergency to attend to, leaving Alex alone with the board, free for Astra to make use of.





	Not A Game

**Author's Note:**

> Happy third General Danvers Week! At least, here in Europe it is officially the 28th, I may have to adjust the publication date here on Ao3 to match lol. The Halloween theme made this pretty challenging, and initially I had an entirely different idea for this day one prompt, but I settled on this. Hope you enjoy, and may many fics follow!

“A Ouija board. Really, Kara?”

“It’ll be fun!” Kara is grinning as she comes into Alex’s apartment, box with the board under her arm, a paper bag with several candles in the other hand. “And no better time than Halloween to try it.”

With a sigh Alex closes the door behind her and follows her to the table, settling in on the couch as Kara is rapidly setting up the board and candles, the lights switched off. “You know there’s no such thing as ghosts, right? It’s all just made up as a comfort to those who fear death.”

“You mean like how there was no such thing as aliens?” Alex watches as Kara places down a lit candle, which is extinguished by the gust of her movement once she moves to place the next. Sheepishly, Kara switches tactics to place them first and _then_ light all of them, before she mindfully settles on the couch, next to Alex.

“Touché.” Alex would argue that the idea of them being the only sentient life forms in the entire universe was ridiculous to begin with, but by that same logic _she_ could be one of the ridiculous ones in not believing in ghosts. Everything is obvious once you know how it works, which she doesn’t. “I still don’t think anything will come from this.”

“Then there’s no harm in trying!” As she says this she moves to place the planchette on the board. She stiffens the moment it touches it, focused on something Alex can’t make out.

Must be an emergency, relatively nearby.

“Go,” she says, tipping her head back to gesture at the window behind them, “the board won’t go anywhere.”

Kara nods, and she’s out through the window in a flash, a pile of the clothes she was wearing on the floor. With a sigh, Alex moves to pick them up and throw them over one of the chairs; better there than on the floor. She then goes to the kitchen to get herself a cup of coffee; if she’s on her feet anyway, she might as well.

Once that is done she returns to the couch, leaning back and blowing to cool the liquid. She may be tough, but being tough doesn’t include senselessly burning her tongue. Her eyes fall back on the Ouija board, taking in the intricate patterns along the sides, the depictions and seemingly antiquated color, just how badly it tries to be taken seriously rather than as a game.

Alex knows the science behind it. How your subconscious is the one really giving the answers to it – the ideomotor effect that works more effectively when you believe you are not in control of something. No one thinks they are pushing the planchette, but in reality the one asking the questions _is_ pushing it subconsciously. They’ve tested it with blindfolds. It doesn’t work when you can’t see the board.

Alex also knows the rules to it, just to be on the safe side.

Just because you don’t believe in something doesn’t mean you should be reckless with it. The horror stories are likely just exaggerations and fabrications, but on the off chance they aren’t, however slim those chances, those are not things you want to have happen to you, if only because getting rid of these supposed malevolent spirits would involve engaging in spirituality even more and hiring an exorcist, or something.

She takes a look at the planchette, frowning when she notices it’s positioned on the ‘A’. Didn’t Kara leave it in the middle of the board, where no letters are printed?

Right as she takes notice, the candles all collectively get extinguished and the planchette moves, without her hand anywhere near it, and doesn’t stop moving. It takes a moment for Alex’s eyes to adjust and follow along, seeing how it moved to the ‘E’, to the ‘X’, back to the ‘A’, to the ‘L’, to the ‘E’ again, to the ‘X’ again, and seems to cycle back to the ‘A’, repeatedly spelling out her name.

The movements are clipped, so fast her eyes can’t actually see it move, it just appears on a different letter each time, as if it’s moved at superspeed. It probably is. “Kara, this isn’t funny!”

It moves to ‘No’ then, and remains there.

Alex frowns at it. “No?”

The planchette begins to move again, and against better judgment Alex decides to switch her coffee for the notepad and pen, writing down the letters to make sure she isn’t going to miss anything. It’s on a different letter every time she looks back up from writing it down, as if it’s specifically paced for her to follow.

‘A S T R A’

A pit grows in her stomach upon seeing the name. “Astra?”

‘Yes’

Shaking her head vehemently, Alex says, “No. No, this isn’t real, this cannot be happening.” This must be a dream, surely must be a dream if it isn’t Kara, and she doesn’t think it is. Kara wouldn’t do something like this; she may have a mischievous streak, but this brings up bad memories for the both of them, she wouldn’t bring that back up with this, she wouldn’t bring up something that plays with her emotions. So she closes her eyes, she closes them and internally counts to 10, because this cannot be real.

She pinches herself for good measure, which she can clearly feel, so she must be awake now.

When she opens up her eyes, it’s the exact same scenery as before, except this time the planchette is on the ‘I’. And then the ‘T’. And then the ‘S’, to the ‘R’, the ‘E’, the ‘A’, the ‘L’.

“Fuck!” She didn’t need to write that down to figure it out, and she really wishes she hadn’t. “Great, so this is real. Astra is actually here.”

‘Yes’

Alex groans, closes her eyes once again and pinches the bridge of her nose. She hadn’t even been drinking, she was drinking _coffee_ , but now part of her wishes she had been; it might help her cope with this whole situation. When she opens her eyes again she’s composed herself. “Sorry to say you just missed Kara, she had an emergency. I could pass on a message?”

‘No’

“No? Why the hell are you here then?”

‘4 U’

She rolls her eyes at that; of course Astra would have learned how to text efficiently before talking through a damn spirit board. Or had she known that while she was alive already? There’s something almost amusing about that idea.

Still, Astra being here for her, for the agent who took her life, that is concerning at best. “What, did you come here to try and scare me to death? That’s not going to work.”

‘No’ it says, before moving rapidly, using a lot of letters to spell out whatever she is planning to say. There’s two letters every time she looks up from her notepad, which is admittedly faster, but much harder to keep track of. ‘I CAME 2 APOLOGIZE’

“You came to apologize to me?” Frowning, Alex tries to wrap her head around that one. “What could you possibly want to apologize for? _I’m_ the one that killed _you_ , if anything you should want an apology from-“

The planchette jumps to ‘No’ before she can finish that sentence. And then starts moving rapidly again. ‘I FORCED UR HAND’

Well, she wasn’t about to argue that one, holding J’onn at knifepoint might as well have been a flashing neon sign that said ‘hostile enemy’. Alex had tried her best to give her a second chance, had made it abundantly clear she didn’t want to fight, but all of that had been tossed aside in that moment. “Still. It’s part of the job, I was prepared for that.”

‘U DIDNT WANT 2’

“Of course I didn’t, you’re Kara’s aunt. She loved you, she still does. I know you loved her too.”

‘THATS NOT ALL IS IT’

Alex frowns at the letters on her notepad. “What, I presume to know you, now you presume to know me? You were one of her last ties to Krypton, I didn’t want to take that away, that’s all.”

‘DONT LIE 2 URSELF’

“I’m not!” She waits for a rebuttal, any response from Astra. A few beats pass, and then a few seconds, and still the planchette doesn’t move from its place on the ‘F’. “Seriously? You’re just going to stay silent now? I don’t know what you want me to tell you!”

Ten seconds.

Thirty seconds.

A minute.

Alex throws her arms up in defeat; Astra clearly isn’t going to continue this conversation. “Fine, be like that. What is it you wanna hear, huh? That I could see you weren’t all bad? Because we covered that. I knew your heart wasn’t in the war anymore, I knew you loved Kara. Hell, you may even have had some sense of honor left, seeing as you kept your word at the exchange.”

The planchette remains unmoving.

“You are annoyingly frustrating, you know that? I gave you a chance, I was getting through to you, I know I was. I could see it in your eyes, you were tempted. And you just wasted that chance! All that honor and love, none of it meant anything, you went right back to your plan of taking over people’s minds. I mean, who does that?! So yes, it hurt that I had to kill you, is that what you want to hear? That I saw all that potential, this… this _goodness_ inside of you, that you just tossed aside?”

Alex is practically shouting at this point, anger burning through her veins red and hot, but that’s not the only thing she’s feeling. There’s a different feeling, just as intense and erratic, and it’s what causes her to continue, “Or do you want to hear about these stupid human feelings I have, how I liked you, how I was _attracted_ to you, and didn’t figure it out until months after you were dead?”

‘Yes’, and the moment Alex’s eye falls on it (her vision is slightly blurry, when did she start crying?), it immediately moves to say ‘IM SORRY’

“You fucking should be,” she says, wiping the tears away.

‘U NEED 2 KNOW STH’

Alex, once again, frowns at what she just wrote down on the notepad. “What?” She can’t imagine there’s anything Astra could tell her now, after more than a year has passed, that could actually make a difference.

The light switches on then, and her head whips towards the switch, revealing a figure standing there, and Alex can’t tear her eyes away. That’s impossible. Astra. “Your feelings are mutual,” she says gently, almost nervously, entirely unlike the Astra she has come to know.

The Astra that died.

The Astra that she _killed_.

She doesn’t know how to stop gaping at her, or how to gather her thoughts. Astra is alive. Astra returns her feelings. _Astra isn’t dead._ Astra is here. In her apartment. How? She saw, she _felt_ that blade go through her, saw her die, _Kara_ saw her die. But she is here. This has to be a dream, she probably fell asleep somewhere during the conversation with the board.

But when she pinches herself, again, it stings as much as it did before.

Astra is really here.

“I- You-…” Alex takes a breath, a moment to compose. “Does Kara know?”

She shakes her head, “You are protective of her. I wanted to… clear things with you, first.” That vulnerability she’d shown fades then, replaced with a confidence and swagger that is much more like the Astra she knows. “That, and we will have some time alone before her return, should you want to make use of that.”

She probably shouldn’t want to. Definitely shouldn’t want to. But damnit, she has ached for this for months knowingly, even longer unknowingly, and it’s really hard to say no when there probably won’t be a better opportunity for a while. The DEO will want to clear her, Kara will constantly want her attention, and there are so many complications they will still have to work out, but those are all worries for later.

For now, she has Astra right here, and she’ll be damned if she doesn’t make the most of that.

And so she does. They both do.


End file.
